ROBERT DEWITT: Abortions are infant sacrifices to radical feminism

Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 10:41 p.m.

TUSCALOOSA

Back when I was a kid, I went to see John Huston’s “The Bible.” There was a scene in it where it appeared people were throwing infants into a big roaring bonfire.

It made me think how often the Bible mentioned infant and child sacrifice. As gruesome as the practice seemed, it was hard to have a very visceral reaction to it. I thought that it was among the things in the Bible that had slipped from relevancy. After all, nobody sacrificed babies and children to idols and false gods anymore.

Later, I realized I was wrong. Infant sacrifice has reached unprecedented proportions. During the 40 years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade ruling, an estimated 55 million children have been sacrificed to the false gods of radical feminism. So much for the irrelevancy of ancient barbarism.

The similarities between today’s abortion proponents and the ancient pagans is striking. They placed greater value on sexual fertility and crop production than the lives of children. They burned their infants and slit their throats hoping that their gods would make them more prosperous by providing them with more children and more bushels of wheat or more livestock.

Today, with a greater degree of sophistication, people take the life inside the womb so that a woman has the opportunity to pursue a career and ambitions unimpeded by the necessity of caring for a child. People value sexual freedom and downright irresponsibility more than the lives of children.

Those who call their position pro-choice seek to separate themselves from the barbarity of what they would grant the right to choose. One of them once told me, “nobody is in favor of abortion.” They just want people to have it available to them as a choice. Odd that what no one favors has been done 55 million times.

I’m not going to dither around and call my position “pro-life” just to pretty it up and give it a semantic advantage; I’m anti-abortion. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I have a raw, emotional response when I think about the “fetuses” killed in the procedure. I read the obituaries every day and I don’t weep at the deaths of people I don’t know.

But I don’t pretend they aren’t people. I don’t try to claim their deaths aren’t real because I didn’t have a personal relationship with them. It’s not necessary for me to have an emotional reaction to the taking of an unborn life to know it’s wrong.

For years the argument has been whether the being within the womb was really living. The pro-abortion side has typically engaged in linguistic and logical acrobatics to arrive at a point where removing it wasn’t really killing it.

But at least one member of the pro-abortion camp has thrown off the oppressive yoke of that argument. In an opinion piece in Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams doesn’t argue that “fetuses” aren’t alive.

“When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory,” Williams writes. “I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of ‘scraping out a bunch of cells’ and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of ‘the baby’ and ‘this kid.’ ”

She describes people who were relieved over abortions and grieved over miscarriages. “Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same?” she says. “Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.”

Williams argued that the pro-abortion side has been wimping out. In a nutshell, she’s saying own it for what it is. Abortion takes a life.

It’s always been my belief that if people really owned that, they couldn’t support abortion. This is a country that goes all queasy and agonizes over taking the life of merciless killers. But I might be wrong. And God help us, we really are barbarians if we’ve reached that point.

Williams says that if it takes killing to guarantee women “unrestricted reproductive freedom,” then kill. Her piece carries the headline, “So what if abortion ends life? I believe that life starts at conception. And it’s never stopped me from being pro-choice.” It fits the content perfectly

“Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal,” she says. “ ... A fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

She concludes that if a living human inside a womb stands between a woman and her unrestricted reproductive freedom, well then, it’s a life “worth sacrificing.”

All life is not equal, she says. But what about an old man or woman who has lapsed into dementia? What about the child with Down syndrome? What about the person who sustained brain damage in an auto accident and needs care? If we kill unborn life for little more than convenience, what about them?

“All life is not equal.” Christmas is gone more than a month but I still remember what the Ghost of Christmas Present said to Scrooge: “Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions ... ”

Robert DeWitt is senior writer for The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at robert.dewitt@tuscaloosanews.com.

<p>TUSCALOOSA</p><p>Back when I was a kid, I went to see John Huston's “The Bible.” There was a scene in it where it appeared people were throwing infants into a big roaring bonfire.</p><p>It made me think how often the Bible mentioned infant and child sacrifice. As gruesome as the practice seemed, it was hard to have a very visceral reaction to it. I thought that it was among the things in the Bible that had slipped from relevancy. After all, nobody sacrificed babies and children to idols and false gods anymore.</p><p>Later, I realized I was wrong. Infant sacrifice has reached unprecedented proportions. During the 40 years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade ruling, an estimated 55 million children have been sacrificed to the false gods of radical feminism. So much for the irrelevancy of ancient barbarism.</p><p>The similarities between today's abortion proponents and the ancient pagans is striking. They placed greater value on sexual fertility and crop production than the lives of children. They burned their infants and slit their throats hoping that their gods would make them more prosperous by providing them with more children and more bushels of wheat or more livestock.</p><p>Today, with a greater degree of sophistication, people take the life inside the womb so that a woman has the opportunity to pursue a career and ambitions unimpeded by the necessity of caring for a child. People value sexual freedom and downright irresponsibility more than the lives of children.</p><p>Those who call their position pro-choice seek to separate themselves from the barbarity of what they would grant the right to choose. One of them once told me, “nobody is in favor of abortion.” They just want people to have it available to them as a choice. Odd that what no one favors has been done 55 million times.</p><p>I'm not going to dither around and call my position “pro-life” just to pretty it up and give it a semantic advantage; I'm anti-abortion. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I have a raw, emotional response when I think about the “fetuses” killed in the procedure. I read the obituaries every day and I don't weep at the deaths of people I don't know.</p><p>But I don't pretend they aren't people. I don't try to claim their deaths aren't real because I didn't have a personal relationship with them. It's not necessary for me to have an emotional reaction to the taking of an unborn life to know it's wrong.</p><p>For years the argument has been whether the being within the womb was really living. The pro-abortion side has typically engaged in linguistic and logical acrobatics to arrive at a point where removing it wasn't really killing it.</p><p>But at least one member of the pro-abortion camp has thrown off the oppressive yoke of that argument. In an opinion piece in Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams doesn't argue that “fetuses” aren't alive.</p><p>“When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory,” Williams writes. “I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of 'scraping out a bunch of cells' and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of 'the baby' and 'this kid.' ”</p><p>She describes people who were relieved over abortions and grieved over miscarriages. “Why can't we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it's pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn't the same?” she says. “Fetuses aren't selective like that. They don't qualify as human life only if they're intended to be born.”</p><p>Williams argued that the pro-abortion side has been wimping out. In a nutshell, she's saying own it for what it is. Abortion takes a life.</p><p>It's always been my belief that if people really owned that, they couldn't support abortion. This is a country that goes all queasy and agonizes over taking the life of merciless killers. But I might be wrong. And God help us, we really are barbarians if we've reached that point.</p><p>Williams says that if it takes killing to guarantee women “unrestricted reproductive freedom,” then kill. Her piece carries the headline, “So what if abortion ends life? I believe that life starts at conception. And it's never stopped me from being pro-choice.” It fits the content perfectly</p><p>“Here's the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal,” she says. “ ... A fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She's the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”</p><p>She concludes that if a living human inside a womb stands between a woman and her unrestricted reproductive freedom, well then, it's a life “worth sacrificing.”</p><p>All life is not equal, she says. But what about an old man or woman who has lapsed into dementia? What about the child with Down syndrome? What about the person who sustained brain damage in an auto accident and needs care? If we kill unborn life for little more than convenience, what about them?</p><p>“All life is not equal.” Christmas is gone more than a month but I still remember what the Ghost of Christmas Present said to Scrooge: “Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions ... ”</p><p>Robert DeWitt is senior writer for The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at robert.dewitt@tuscaloosanews.com.</p>